(Editor’s Note:Open Mic is a new series from BGS with a simple premise – to remove all the filters between artist and audience and give musicians and creatives an Open Mic. With each installment, we’ll hold space for musicians to say whatever they’d like on any topic they like in any format that moves them most. It’s about facilitating real conversations and genuine insight with our roots music community.)
For our first edition of our new series, we set up an Open Mic for Americana newcomer Tommy Prine, an emerging singer-songwriter who walks a unique tightrope. The son of folk legend John Prine and an artist with a creative vision all his own, his work both builds on an established tradition and breaks free from the past – a contrast in full view at his December 2023 Grand Ole Opry debut.
Here, Prine reflects on his winding and not-at-all anticipated path into the artistic world – and into the ability to stand on his own creative feet.
Tommy Prine: “I have learned many things over the last few years, but the most important lesson I have learned is that no one gets anywhere without a lot of support.
“My wife, Savannah, is the embodiment of support. We decided in 2020 that we were going to give this music thing a shot, and by ‘shot’ I mean throwing every ounce of our hearts and spirit into making it work. She has taken on so many roles and worn a thousand hats (still does) during this music journey and it amazes me everyday how graceful and effortlessly she navigates the strange world that we operate in.
“My mom, Fiona, has been the guiding hand through so many new and scary events ultimately enabling me to gain the needed self-confidence to be an artist. She also played that role in raising me, and I owe a whole lot to her for any and all success in my life.
“My dad, John, set a standard of manhood that I will always strive to attain; gentleness, respect, and a lot of listening. As I walk the path that he walked, I learn more about him each day and his lessons unfold time and time again. Thank you for a lifetime of love and teachings, Dad.
“My brothers, Jody and Jack, have seen me in every shape and form I have ever taken on and been nothing but loving and understanding. They both have taught me so much about patience, wisdom and any and all cool music/movies. Without them I would be an entirely different person with different interests, and I couldn’t be prouder to be their little brother.
“My friends, who have been there with me since I was just a kid who played guitar by himself with the doors closed, all of you have influenced me to be a better and smarter man, and have never missed an opportunity to support me. For these reasons, I consider myself the luckiest man alive, and I feel undeserved of such incredible and loving company.
“When I reflect on my Opry debut, the word that comes to mind is acceptance. Acceptance into the community of artists that I admire so much, and acceptance of the life path that I chose which led me to the Grand Ole Opry. Growing up in Nashville, the Grand Ole Opry stage is the stage that you tell yourself, ‘One day, I’ll get there.’ When those thoughts crossed my mind as a teen, all it ever felt like was a dream. An unattainable dream barricaded by years of the most vulnerable and terrifying work I could imagine.
“Part of me knew who I had to be in order to get there, and the other part of me found that to be impossible. My journey in music has provided the personal growth I always wanted – and if all else fails, at least I found out who I really am. When an artist gets the opportunity to step into that circle, they light their own torch. On December 8th, 2023 I lit my own torch, and I intend to carry it to the end of my road.”
Photo Credit: Courtesy of the Grand Ole Opry, shot by Chris Hollo
Hanukkah has begun, advent calendars have barely three weeks left, and days will start getting longer when we reach winter solstice in merely 13 days – but who’s counting? As we lean further and further into the coziest, roots music-iest time of year, we’re rounding up our favorite seasonal and holiday albums, tracks, and shows each week on BGS Wraps. Scroll to find this list in playlist form, plus don’t miss our Classic Holiday Album Recommendation of the week.
We’ll be back next Friday with more BGS Wraps! Until then enjoy some hot cider or some eggnog and some delightfully festive bluegrass, country, and roots music.
Hayes Carll and Melissa Carper, “Christmas in Prison”
A perennial favorite penned by none other than John Prine, “Christmas in Prison” is a rare country Christmas song that can be sung year-round. Like your favorite holiday movie that’s actually not specifically a holiday movie – Die Hard? Little Women? – this is a song so classic, so iconic, that it demands recognition across the calendar and not merely in December. Hayes Carll and Melissa Carper join together on this brand new rendition and they do the song justice, for sure.
Joy Clark, “Gumbo Christmas”
As most holidays are, Christmas is its own familial and cultural melting pot, and guitarist and singer-songwriter Joy Clark highlights her own New Orleans traditions with “Gumbo Christmas.” It’s a song with a recipe both literal and figurative, a combination all of the best holiday dishes know intimately. That Big Easy horn section is fit to carry us into 2024.
CMA Country Christmas (December 14, ABC; December 15, Hulu and Disney+)
The queen of Christmas in Nashville, Amy Grant, is co-hosting this year’s CMA Country Christmas TV special on ABC with none other than Trisha Yearwood. With performances by The War & Treaty, Ashley McBryde, Jon Pardi, reigning CMA Entertainer of the Year Lainey Wilson, and more. Tune in on Thursday, December 14 for the live program, or watch the following day – and throughout the season – on Hulu and Disney+. For those of us who won’t make Vince Gill and Grant’s annual holiday residency at the Ryman in Nashville, this show will be an excellent consolation prize.
Rose Cousins, “I’ve Got My Love to Keep Me Warm”
There’s almost no better artist to turn to for delicious melancholia than Rose Cousins. Her new holiday single, “I’ve Got My Love to Keep Me Warm,” demonstrates this fact and then some. Winter songs without a specific religious or traditional bent are too rare, so we especially love this track for its “agnosticism” and relatability. Why care how much it may storm, if you’ve got your love to keep you warm? We hope you are surrounded by love this holiday season, and however lonesome or joyous you’re feeling this year, Cousins’ voice will envelope you like a toasty hug.
Bridget Kearney, “Don’t Think About the Polar Bear”
A vibey and meditative new track from Lake Street Dive bassist Bridget Kearney is another holiday track of the Die Hard sort – not demonstrably seasonal, but it works so we’re accepting it with open arms into our wintry celebration. The accompanying animated music video is whimsical enough to be a fitting addition to any lineup with The Grinch, Rudolph, and all of your other favorite Christmas animated TV specials. If your intention is to not think about someone this holiday season, you might just find them wandering across your mind – so don’t think about the polar bear, instead.
The Kody Norris Show, “Mountain City Christmas”
The territory surrounding Mountain City, Tennessee, in the Blue Ridge Mountains of East Tennessee, Western North Carolina, and Southwest Virginia is home to most of the farms that grow most of the Christmas trees for the eastern seaboard of the United States. It’s more than fitting, then, to take this nostalgic and magical Kody Norris Show-led journey through the picturesque counties they call home. What’s more bluegrass than singing about snow, home, family, faith, and rhyming “there” with “Christmas carol”?
Larry & Joe, “Mi Burrito Sabanero”
Bluegrass banjo player and fiddler Joe Troop and harpist, multi-instrumentalist Larry Bellorín are Larry & Joe. Their new holiday single, “Mi Burrito Sabanero,” is a funny, raucous, and enjoyable version of a quintessential Latin American holiday tune written by Venezuelan harpist and composer Hugo Blanco. Much of Troop’s work connects the dots between Latin folk music and American roots music, crafting idiosyncratic amalgamations often expected to be more disparate and dissonant than they really are. For this track, Bellorín set aside the harp and picked up the cuatro, with Troop adding twin fiddles and banjo in another instance of remarkable latingrass fusion.
Maddie & Tae, We Need Christmas
Maddie & Tae, of “Girl in a Country Song” fame, recently released an extended cut of their 2020 holiday EP, We Need Christmas, adding three new tracks – each classic Christmas carols – to the fan favorite collection. Both women are now married and starting families and there’s a confidence and ease they’ve grown into at this phase of their careers. Easily some of the most interesting pop country being made, and certainly an excellent holiday manifestation of the form.
Brenda Lee, “Rockin’ Around the Christmas Tree”
For the first time in her 60+ year career Brenda Lee has scored a Number 1 hit on Billboard’s Hot 100 chart with her truly unforgettable holiday single, “Rockin’ Around the Christmas Tree.” How she supplanted Mariah Carey’s “All I Want for Christmas,” we’ll never know, but we are so glad for Lee that she’s notched this incredible milestone even at this late stage in her lifelong music-making. She first recorded the iconic track as a thirteen-year-old and in an emotional video posted by Billboard and to her social media, you can tell she never imagined this song would be the gem it is in the crown of her music career. Congratulations, Brenda Lee!
Kaitlyn Raitz, “River”
Cellist, composer, and arranger Kaitlyn Raitz released a stunning, instrumental string-centered cover of Joni Mitchell’s “River” a handful of weeks ago, a timely tune drop for those of us struggling to navigate the holidays without Mitchell’s catalog available on a certain streaming service. Lush and romantic, Raitz’s cut of the track is high concept while down to earth, like a perfect Christmas Eve program at a local church, stained glass bookended by poinsettias and candles. A must-add for your instrumental holiday playlists or perfect to soundtrack your cookie icing party or frenzied gift swaps.
Matt Rogers, Have You Heard of Christmas?
BGS Wraps would be simply incomplete without a laugh-so-hard-you’re-crying option, supplied here by comedian Matt Rogers’ holiday outting, Have You Heard of Christmas? With guests such as Muna (swoon-a), Bowen Yang (Rogers’ co-host of the hit podcast, Las Culturistas, known from SNL), and Leland, Have You Heard of Christmas is pure chaos, absolutely unhinged. Melodrama meets the chronically online. Joe’s Pub, dragged through 54 Below. When you’re offered aux this year at your holiday gatherings, put this one on. We dare you.
Andy Thorn, High Country Holiday
Banjoist Andy Thorn was known as Leftover Salmon’s banjo player, before a video of him serenading a wild fox went mega viral and eclipsed all other entries on his resumé. Thorn – who is a self-professed Christmas fanatic – has recently released a brand new holiday album, High Country Holiday, drawing on inspiration from his Colorado backyard and his musical community to put together a bevy of carols and one bespoke original, “The Bells of Boulder.” Add it to your stack of bluegrass Christmas records! It’s destined to become a classic in that category.
Tim and James, A Tim and James Christmas
Los Angeles-based string duo Tim and James – Tim Reynolds and James Spaite – have followed up their popular debut, Lemon Tree, with a holiday EP, A Tim and James Christmas and it’s already a favorite of ours. These simple duets feel fully realized, even while they remain contained, and draw on folk, new acoustic, and chambergrass influences. The kernel within Tim and James’ music – that took their songs from beginning as a regular Tuesday collaboration to tens of thousands of streams – is on full display. There’s something entrancing about this bare bones, four-song collection.
Our Classic Holiday Album Recommendation of the Week: Béla Fleck & the Flecktones, Jingle All the Way
Each year we are reminded of the sheer genius of Béla Fleck & the Flecktones’ Jingle All the Way. It’s a Christmas album we return to again and again and we know we aren’t the only ones – it was chosen by O magazine (yes, Oprah’s publication) as 2008’s Best Christmas Album and it peaked at Number 1 on the contemporary jazz charts. Béla and the Flecktones’ cultural impact was certainly solidified by the time Jingle All the Way had released, but this album – perhaps more than any other music by the group in the 21st Century – cemented their broad, far-reaching influence.
Photo Credit: Joy Clark by Nkechi Chibueze; Rose Cousins by Lindsay Duncan; Andy Thorn courtesy of the artist.
In advance of the release of Vincent Neil Emerson’s latest, critically-acclaimed album, The Golden Crystal Kingdom – which dropped on November 10 – BGS moderated a conversation between VNE and his friend and peer, country & western singer-songwriter and song-interpreter Charley Crockett.
Both artists cut their teeth in music venues in Texas a decade ago. In our conversation, they tell the story of how they came to know each other and discuss ways they protect each other within the business. They talk about covering and cutting each other’s songs and the importance of telling their truths.
Emerson’s new album, produced by Shooter Jennings, veers his sound toward warm ’60s rock and folk influences. He opens up to Charley and BGS about its creation process and what is on the horizon for him.
Charley Crockett: What’s up, Vincent?
Vincent Neil Emerson: What’s up, my boy?
CC: Another day, another dollar.
BGS: Tell me where you both are in the world right now.
VNE: I’m in Asheville, North Carolina, right now, at an Airbnb.
CC: I’m up here in San Luis Valley in Southern Colorado.
Both really nice places to be in the fall.
VNE: You ain’t wrong.
Can you give us a little bit of context about your relationship, where you know each other from, and how long you have been working together?
VNE: Charley, you wanna go?
CC: Oh man, I always tell that story; I wanna hear it from you.
VNE: I met Charley in Deep Ellum. We were playing around town, playing a lot of shows around there and Fort Worth. That was over 10 years ago, maybe?
CC: I was trying to think about it this morning. I think it had to be ’13 or ’14.
VNE: That’s crazy, man.
CC: He remembers it being at Adair Saloon; I remember it being at the Freeman. It really don’t matter, ’cause I’m sure it was both places.
VNE: I’m sure we went and had a drink at Adairs or something like that.
CC: I remember I walked up on him and said, “I like all them Justin Townes Earle songs.” And he said, “I only played one.” I always liked what he was doing, and he used to play solo and do the guitar pools up at Magnolia Motor Lounge all the time. He’d be up there smoking a cigarette, picking through them songs like Townes Van Zandt, and I thought, “Oh lord have mercy, this boy is a force to be reckoned with.”
VNE: Man, I felt the same way as soon as I heard you, brother. I remember a couple of nights I saw you at the Freeman with this band. You had a bunch of guys up on that tiny little stage, and you were just ripping through all these songs, taking all these old honky tonk songs and flipping them on their head and turning them into blues and vice versa. I always thought that was so cool, man.
CC: I don’t remember that well, but I guess you’re right. In those days, every gig we played for both me and Vincent, we ended up getting booked by the same folks, or they were all standing together in some bar, no matter if it was Ft. Worth or Nashville or Los Angeles. One way or another, all them same business folks been standing pretty close to me and Vincent. And that’s the truth.
Well, that’s convenient if you like to work together, I guess. Charley, do you have questions you want to dig in on?
CC: You know, Erin, I don’t even know what the hell we are doing?
Let’s talk about the release of Vincent’s new album.
CC: Well, let me just do this then. Everything he’s been putting out with Shooter [Jennings], like everything else he’s ever done…If you sit there looking at Vincent and he surprises you, it’s like, “Oh damn, I didn’t know old boy was gonna do that.” The very next thing he does, it just happens again — every single time. I remember when he was playing “7 Come 11” way before anybody gave a damn about him and was looking out for his interests or his career. He had all them songs in his pocket way before anybody had ideas or designs on him and his business. I’ve said for a long time that “7 Come 11” is one of the best folk songs written out of Texas in 20 years. Remember Central Track, Vincent?
VNE: Yeah, they did a lot of write-ups on music.
CC: I will never forget that stuff when you did that record and what you were doing live. Erin, he was playing for 50 bucks and a case of Lone Star in them dive bars in Fort Worth, you know? He was living in a 10×10 room. He was hardly ever even standing inside of the damn joint.
A handful of us showed up at the same time, and we are all moving on our own paths, but we’ve all stayed pretty close, or we damn sure weave it together quite a bit even if we get way out there, you know, in the territories, we always come back to each other. I think I met Leon Bridges right around the same time that I met Vincent. I met him in Deep Ellum, too. There is a guy who plays guitar with me now named Alexis Sanchez. He had a band back then, and he was playing at Club Dada there for some little festival, and Leon Bridges was standing there in a trench coat and a bowler hat. I venture to guess that me and Leon and Vincent met each other damn near about the same time. There were a lot of other folks like that. Ten years later, especially for some Texas guys, you know, we’ve all grown a lot, and I think we have always supported each other and loved each others’ music. That’s only grown, and Vincent is standing there as one of the premier, original, authentic talents to come out of Texas since the turn of the damn century. I’m not blowing smoke. I’m just stating what is already happening.
VNE: Man, that is high praise. I appreciate you sayin’ that, Charley.
CC: Well, they want all this shit to write about it, but that’s just the truth. He was playing in Fort Worth and like I said, playing for all that low money. They were calling him Lefty. Why did they call you Lefty? I figured it was because you had a black eye or something.
VNE: Yeah, I had my left eye knocked out of the socket one time, and the nickname stuck for a while.
CC: I remember they wrote about you pretty salaciously there in the Fort Worth Weekly. I know a thing or two about that myself.
VNE: I would say it was because they were trying to sell papers, but it was a free publication.
CC: Shit, they are selling advertisements. I think the Dallas Observer is still doing that to me.
He was playing them bars, we were playing them bars. I don’t know which one of us is which, but more often than not, he sure seems like if I’m Waylon, he’s Willie. I have felt like that for a long time. You could change the names. I think about this stuff a lot. The business folks, it is always hard to tell what they are doing, but you can be sure they are rolling dice and betting and gambling on folks. It ends up being, a guy like Vincent that somebody like me can lean on a lot more. We can trust those guys, and I’m real happy with who I’m working with, and I’m sure Vincent is, too. It is the other artists living life for the song that gets us through. I know I feel like that about Vincent, and I feel like that about a lot of other guys I don’t know as well as him.
Kind of like Johnny Cash said, “We are all family, even though some of us barely know each other.” I think it is because we can see each other and know we are in the same boat and in that way, care more for each other than other people would. I think it is pretty serious. It is life and death.
VNE: That’s a good feeling to not feel so alone in that way and have people out there and doing things similar to you. They probably think a lot of the same thoughts. Me and you are good buddies, Charley, and I feel that way, too. I feel like some guys out there like Tyler Childers – I really respect him, and I feel like he is in the same boat as us. I’m not as well known as you guys, but I think none of that really matters. I think what it comes down to is that we are all songwriters trying to make our own stories happen and be true to ourselves and honest to the world. I think that the reason we can relate to each other is the same reason the fans can relate. Honesty will cut through anything and bring people together.
CC: One way or another, them folks we are selling tickets to, they know.
VNE: You can’t fake the funk, I guess.
CC: Eventually, it comes through. Speaking of Tyler Childers, we ended up on the same plane flying from Nashville to Austin recently… I was there for the Country Music Hall of Fame induction and I didn’t want to go. I get real antisocial and want to hide out from everybody and shit, and I went to Nashville kicking and screaming. Tanya Tucker was getting inducted to the Hall of Fame with a couple of other people. Patty Loveless and Bob McDill, who I wasn’t that familiar with. I had thought that he’d written the Jimmy C. Newman song, “Louisiana Saturday Night”, which I know real well. To be honest with you, it is the only reason I agreed to go out there, ’cause I love singing that song. I made a lot of money writing songs off of that song, so I figured I owed whoever the songwriter was. Long story short, there in the last week, I found out it was a different “Louisiana Saturday Night,” regularly mistakenly attributed to Bob McDill cause he wrote a totally separate song called “Louisiana Saturday Night” that Mel McDaniel had a big hit with, and that’s the one that goes,
“Well, you get down the fiddle and you get down the bow Kick off your shoes and you throw ’em on the floor Dance in the kitchen ’til the mornin’ light Louisiana Saturday night”
That was a big ol hit, right Vincent? He did “Baby’s Got Her Blue Jeans On,” and a bunch of shit like that that I just didn’t realize. My naive, ignorant ass goes up there to Nashville kicking and screaming, and that’s how I feel. A horse gets led to water or something like that. I saw Tanya get inducted. I damn near built my career off of my version of “Jamestown Ferry” when I was younger, and I realized that she had blazed that trail for me, and I had not shown her enough respect. I really hadn’t. Same thing with Bob McDill. All those songs he wrote and the advice he gave in his speech, and my dumbass could really shut up and pay attention to these folks.
Then I ran into Tyler going from there. He was flying to Austin to do a John Prine tribute. That’s how it is. When I see Tyler, I’m on a plane. When I see Vincent, it is at Monterey Fairgrounds. We are ships passing in the night. All these guys like Tyler, Colter [Wall], Leon, Vincent. Whenever I see them, they got a big light around them, and it is shining. You just want it to keep shining for them, and for myself, to keep it going,
I don’t know exactly where you want to go with this, Erin, but I’m excited about this record. Shooter was telling me about your songs and offered to send them and I was like, “No, I ain’t gonna do that. I wanna be like everyone else.” I wanna watch this thing get rolled out, and I wanna be excited. I’m looking forward to going through the songs.
Vincent, can you tell us about working with Shooter on this record?
VNE: I met Shooter a few times. Me and Charley were at this festival in Iowa hanging out, and Shooter came up to me and tapped me on the shoulder. I’d met him before at another festival but I’d never talked to him. He turned me around and said, “Hey man, I really like that thing you did with Rodney Crowell.” He paid me a lot of compliments, and since then, we talked, and when it came time to make another record, Shooter was the first guy I thought of. I thought it would be such a cool idea to work with him on an album. One thing about him is he really is one of the nicest people I’ve ever met, and he is a genuine fan of music. He’s trying to make cool things happen. I’m so lucky I got to work with him on it. That is the big takeaway from the whole thing for me was making a real good friend like that and meeting someone who gets me excited about songwriting and about making an album and making music in general.
Since Charley cut “7 Come 11” and you cut one of Charley’s songs for this record, can you talk about what prompted “Time of the Cottonwood Trees” winding up in this pile of songs?
VNE: Oh man – that song. Me and you were on tour together for three months, was it last summer? We did a bunch of dates, and we were on the road a long time, and I was listening to Charley do that song every night. It was a brand new song that hadn’t come out on his record yet. I got to hear him sing that song every night by himself, and I just think it is one of the best songs I’ve ever heard. It is one of my favorites from you, Charley. I think it is a fine example of songwriting. When it came time to make this album, I always wanted to pay tribute to you and cut one of your songs on a record because you cut “7 Come 11.” That really ties back into that whole Willie and Waylon and all those old timers who cut each others’ songs and lifted each other up like that. I just wanted to pay tribute to you, and that’s why I put it on the album.
CC: Shit, I appreciate it. I’ll be excited to get the check in the mail. You surprised the hell out of me with that one, you really did. I’ve always wanted people to cut my songs. Sometimes, I think I’d be better off that way. I have so many. I’ve always cut a lot of songs that weren’t mine, probably about half of them. And I got about a 250-song catalog of published shit. I would guess about 40-50% are songs I didn’t write. I feel like I’ve caught a lot of heat for that. People have an idea about me that I never wrote a single song. I think that’s because we live in an era where, like what Vincent was talking about, where all those folks back in the day, across genres, and it wasn’t just country it was pop, folk, soul, R&B. It was everything. Everyone was cutting each other’s songs. I just really think that to write a great song, you have to learn great songs from other people.
You have to watch out for these publishers these days. They’ll just put any piece of junk out as long as they’ve got control over it. They figured out they can make money selling junk. If you can make more money than ever before selling junk and you aren’t principled, and you aren’t that close to the music, well, they don’t see the reason not to do it that way. I think it feels like a renaissance.
VNE: Specifically in the genre of country music, there is a lot of junk out there. I don’t want to put anyone down. Most of the time, I just try to ignore whatever I don’t like. I think that’s the best way to go about it. I think there is room at the table for everybody, whatever you are into. I just think it is so cool that Sturgill and Charley and Colter and Tyler, all these other guys that are out here putting out real, honest-to-goodness songwriter songs. And not just that, but real country music. It doesn’t matter if it is your song or someone else’s; if you are telling that story honestly, I think that’s great. I’ve always appreciated you for that, Charley. I think you are a great interpreter of songs, and I think you are an even better songwriter, man.
CC: Damn, I’m glad I talked to y’all this morning. I feel better.
I’m glad that we are talking about cutting songs because that is such a huge part of country music, interpreting other people’s songs or reinterpreting a song. It feels like that art was lost in the past 20 years or so and it is having a resurgence. I’m excited that you guys are at the forefront of that, because great songs have more than one life. And it is an opportunity for songwriters to make more money.
VNE: I think it is one of the greatest compliments that a songwriter could receive – to have an artist who they love and respect cut one of their songs.
CC: There is no question about that. That is the best feeling.
VNE: It is, cause you know that your songs has legs and can go places that you can’t, which is a great feeling.
CC: It really is. It is such a political world, and it is so divided. There is a lot of pressure on people that you step out there into the great mirror of society, and the more out there in front of the public that you get, there is a mirror that starts projecting on you, and it is tough to deal with. It is hard to know what to do, but the thing about it is – being able to write honest songs and tell the truth in your writing; that is the most rewarding feeling. That is why I always look forward to what Vincent is doing. There aren’t a whole lot of people that I anticipate their new works as much as him, if anybody really. That’s the whole deal. You look over, and he’s writing better and better, and it makes me want to write better, too.
Speaking of, Vincent, can you talk a bit about your writing process for this record?
VNE: I kind of pieced together songs over time. Sometimes they jump out real fast; sometimes it takes a while. And thanks for saying that Charley, brother. Damn.
CC: I’ve been saying it for 10 years.
VNE: That’s kept me going a lot of times and I don’t think you realize that. These songs – damn, what was I saying?
CC: You were saying sometimes they come quick, sometimes they come slow.
VNE: I’m very influenced by the music that I’m listening to and that is why I try to be real careful about what I listen to. I think it is like if I’m making a smoothie. I gotta put certain ingredients in my brain, and it comes out me on the other end, hopefully. I was listening to a lot of Neil Young and Steven Stills and David Crosby. A lot of the ’60s rock and roll and a lot of Bob Dylan stuff. That’s just where I was in my headspace, so I was taking in all that. I try to put it all together to make it my own. That’s where I was at when I was making this album.
By the way, I’m excited about this rodeo we are playing together, Charley.
CC: Oh shit yeah! At the Virgin Theater there? Yeah man, I’m excited about it, too. Thanks for doing it.
VNE: Thanks for having me on.
CC: When it comes to money and shit like that, just any time, whatever you gotta do to make it work cause I wanna keep playing with you as much as we can and build up. I’ve played in some arenas recently, and I really don’t like it. I don’t know if country music belongs in arenas. And I just mean opening. I can’t sell tickets to no damn arena. And I take a cue from Colter cause he and Tyler and them boys, they could be in arenas all day long if they wanted to be. I would rather play rodeos and municipal auditoriums and really special theaters and stack ‘em up. I think we need to get a goddamned Dripping Springs reunion tour going. A real one.
VNE: Man, that’d be great.
CC: You know what I mean, just do some of our own shit. My aunt and uncle and a bunch of people who haven’t been out to see me play in a long time are coming out to Vegas. I used to live with my uncle when I was a kid in Louisiana and Mississippi and shit. He’s gonna flip his shit when he sees you.
VNE: I can’t wait, man, I’ve heard so many stories about him.
CC: He’s wild. We gonna show these folks what country music actually sounds like. They might not be able to tell who is left or right. Nahhh I’m just kidding it is a bunch of cool people.
Thank y’all for letting me be a part of this. I’m just happy to help out or talk about this. I’m real excited about the album for real. The imagery in your writing, man, it’s like everything you write is getting more and more vivid. You paint such a picture. I’ll stop blowing smoke up your ass.
I’m gonna get back on the trail and Vincent, I’ll talk to you soon.
VNE: Thank you for doing this brother, I appreciate you.
(Editor’s Note: Fiddler, songwriter, and creator Libby Rodenbough writes this personal essay on her friendship with and admiration for BGS Artist of the Month, Alice Gerrard, accompanied by her original photos taken for Gerrard’s new album, Sun to Sun.)
I remember first hearing Ola Belle Reed’s “Undone in Sorrow” when I was 19 or 20. I felt like a portal had been opened unto a world that had existed around me my whole life, unseen and unheard. I grew up in North Carolina going to visit my mom’s family in Madison County, along the Blue Ridge, where any of the graveyards on the mountain sides with their little mounds of clay outside my backseat window might have been the one from Ola Belle’s song.
That portal didn’t open for me in the mountains of North Carolina, though – it was in Chicago, at the Old Town School of Folk Music, an institution that had come out of the ‘50s folk revival. I was big on Pete Seeger and John Prine at that time in my life, and had found out my dad had a cousin with a spare room in Chicago, so I went on a little pilgrimage during a recess from college.
It was there that I learned my first old time fiddle tunes, belting the refrain “down in North Carolina” from “Waterbound” at the school’s open jam while the Chicago winter dumped three feet of snow outside. It was there I first learned the rudiments – very rude in my case – of clawhammer banjo. It was also there that I first heard a left hook of a song called “A Few Old Memories” by Hazel Dickens, which appeared on her 1973 duo record with Alice Gerrard, Hazel & Alice.
I went home from Chicago with new eyes and ears. Places I’d known forever became newly populated with epic figures, recast in the light of 200-year-old narratives. My first semester back in school, I was in an introductory folklore course taught by Mike Taylor (of Hiss Golden Messenger) and he started talking about his friend Alice Gerrard, who lived a town over in Durham. I was fairly well tangled up in time and place at that point – even the deceased people I’d been learning about were brand new to me – so I had to blink a few times to digest that she was the same person singing harmony on “A Few Old Memories.”
Today, 10-ish years later, I sit with Alice in preparation for writing this piece and she tells me about driving Ola Belle Reed in her Dodge van on tours through the South in the late ‘60s. She’s my oldest friend (nearly 90), and all competition lags behind her years pretty pathetically. She also makes a lot of the people I talk to seem boring. We’re in the same business: We sing songs and play shows and make records. She’s been doing it a lot longer, and I think she knows about five times as many songs.
Hanging out with Alice helps me understand why she wanted to be friends with people like Elizabeth Cotten and Luther Davis, who were elderly when she met them. She heard the way they played and sang and had to talk to them about their lives. “They knew exactly who they were,” she says. For a young person who had moved across the country from Oregon to Washington, D.C., without maintaining much contact with home, dropped out of college, and had four children, that self-knowledge was aspirational. Though their rootedness in their communities was part of what drew her to them, she didn’t think of them as avatars of bygone primitive ways of life, or as characters in a play – they were people. Elizabeth Cotten was somewhat guarded, but over years traveling and playing together, she told Alice about indignities she had suffered as a domestic worker and as a Black female folk performer, and about subtle acts of defiance she had worked into both vocations. Luther Davis talked about how lonely it was to get old and run out of witnesses to your own life.
Alice is likewise unafraid of being a person. She’ll tell you straightforwardly that she was unprepared to be a mother, that it was essentially impossible to pursue a music career – which was something she knew she wanted for herself – and still give adequate time to her kids. We commiserate about music industry bullshit and engage in light shit-talking about the idea of showmanship.
She’s usually wearing one of her collection of t-shirts that pertain to her dog Polly’s agility training facility (“Fast and Furryous”). This past March, when I took these photos of her to use for promotion of her new album, Sun to Sun, we went through her closet together and dug out some gems, including a bedazzled commemorative t-shirt from Obama’s inauguration.
I have no training in photography – I shoot film because I enjoy the feeling of not really knowing how it works. We went to Duke Gardens in Durham, where we both live, on a week when the cherry trees had popcorned into glory. Alice looks radiant in the halo of those glowing blooms. But I also love the photos where she’s at home, standing in front of the brick retaining wall around her front yard, before she realized she still had her Apple Watch on. The sky was so blue that day, her white hair incandescent. She looks like she knows something you don’t, but in a warm way, like she knows you’ll get it eventually.
Alice is unafraid to treat a song like it can handle a little handling. She knows that songs are alive and she’s interested in being a part of their lives, not their memorialization. She smiles talking about how, in an old John Cohen film, the Madison County ballad singer Dillard Chandler starts a song in a key around here (she holds her hand at her waistline) and ends it here (she raises her hand up level with her temple). She’s delighted by the particularity of the human touch. She prefers singing voices with a bit of weirdness over purely pretty ones. Talking about Carter Stanley’s high whine, she says, “Whatever was eating on him from the inside, it was showing up in the way he sang. Nina Simone, the same way.” She tells me what a struggle it is to teach that kind of feeling to people accustomed to singing prettily. “If you’re trying to get somebody out of the soft, breathy voice, you say, ‘Look, your kid is running out into the street and you have to call your kid back.’ You don’t say,” — she coos — “‘Heyyyyy Brian, get back here.’ You say, ‘BRIAN! GET BACK HERE!’”
Whenever I’ve played music with her, Alice seems to lean into what people at the Old Town School liked – actually, loved – to call “the folk process;” she lets arrangements evolve as the spirit of the universe sees fit. I’m lucky she’s not a stickler for tradition, even traditions she could write encyclopedias about, because my fiddling style is distinctly unmoored. I was a half-rate Suzuki classical violin student growing up and then at the Old Town School I learned how to accompany folk singers on songs with three or fewer chords. I came home and started going to the old-time jam at Nightlight Bar & Club in Chapel Hill, where the jam leaders were American Studies PhD candidates who also grew up learning fiddle tunes from their hometown octogenarians. Some of my friends started a band called Mipso that was flirtatious with bluegrass and asked me to join, but I told them up front I didn’t know any licks. (They didn’t seem bothered by that.) I’ve since learned a few licks, and I would rather play an old time tune any day of the week than do almost anything else, but I never could sit still long enough to do what Alice calls “holding the line” — keeping and caring for the tradition.
I’m indebted to, and grateful in my heart for, people who do that work. I may roll my eyes at gatekeeping, but it’s more than wide-eyed would-be fiddle players at the gate; it’s the whole monster of monolithic, capitalist cultural imperialism, chomping down on everything small or strange. Songs can, and do, disappear, like cultures and forests, and not just by inertia but by clear-cutting. A lot of days I feel self-conscious about whatever it is I’m doing instead of holding that line. When I listen to Alice tell stories about the many singers and players she’s known over the years, though, I remind myself that they each have a distinct relationship with tradition – and with what it means to be an artist.
For a long time there’s been a divide, rhetorical and sometimes actual, between “the folk” and “the folkies,” which maybe means country people versus city people, or maybe people who grew up in a given musical tradition versus those who came to it later. Alice and I both fall into the latter category, though she’s had considerably sharper focus since her initiation. I’d rather replay a 10-second clip of a Mark O’Connor fiddle solo at one-quarter speed forty-seven times in a row than try to examine that dichotomy in any more detail at this moment, but I did spend a lot of my undergraduate days thinking about authenticity and who’s entitled to do what with old songs. Alice has often found herself among people who look at it from an academic angle – her ex-husband, Mike Seeger, came from a folklorist family – but her view remains that the compulsion to define and categorize is basically academia trying to justify itself. I don’t take that as bitter or glib, I just think she hasn’t found it necessary, in her personal relationship with the music she loves, to try to determine who gets to claim it. Or maybe, for Alice, the claim is in the singing. Talking about what makes a voice “authentic” (a word that sends a chill down my spine), she paraphrases Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart from 1967 in his definition of pornography: “I know it when I see it.”
As we clink the ice around our $7 decaf specialty iced lattes, Alice tells me about a song she’d just heard, a haunting falsetto voice with nylon string guitar, in the opening scene of Pedro Almodóvar’s new short film, Strange Way of Life. After some Google sleuthing, she identified it as a recording by the Brazilian artist Caetano Veloso (in fact, the movie is named for it – “Estranha Forma de Vida.”) She’s head over heels for this song, itching to go home and dig into Veloso’s catalog. If they ever meet, I know she will have great questions for him, the type of questions that make a person believe songs must do real work in this world.
I ask her if she thinks of her music as having “a purpose.” “Not really,” she says. But she goes on, “I want people to hear what I hear in this music.”
In my view, that’s an altruistic goal, because it’s clear that whatever it is Alice hears in the music, it gives her life its very marrow. I admire the decades she has devoted to learning and documenting traditional music, but what I aspire to most is the way she still loves a song — viscerally, instinctively, with gusto. That’s what makes a line worth holding.
“There was something about the music, the quality of the voices,” she says, recalling first hearing Harry Smith’s Anthology of American Folk Music. “There’s so much beauty in it, it’s like, God, yeah.”
I had that “yeah” moment when I heard “Undone in Sorrow” and “A Few Old Memories” – and now, Sun to Sun. I hope to be saying “yeah” like that about songs for the rest of my life.
Rattled by the 2016 election and its aftermath, singer-songwriter Iris DeMent did what folk singers are supposed to do: She picked up her pen. But it took until February 2023 for Workin’ on a World, her seventh album, to reach listeners — and it might not have happened at all if her stepdaughter Pieta Brown hadn’t intervened. Brown (whose father is DeMent’s husband, Greg Brown), had cowritten “I Won’t Ask You Why” and “The Sacred Now” with DeMent and knew several tracks had been recorded before the project hit a pandemic-induced pause. When Brown inquired about the album’s status, DeMent confessed she’d stalled out and given up.
Brown asked to hear what DeMent and co-producers Richard Bennett and Jim Rooney had recorded, then declared an album did, indeed, exist, and helped shepherd it to completion. Then she joined DeMent on tour, opening a series of dates that included a March stop in Austin at which DeMent introduced her new work to a sold-out audience — who were particularly amused when she sang “Goin’ Down to Sing in Texas,” an oh-so-sharp skewering of open-carry laws, male privilege, one-percenters, racism and “war criminals who get to walk around free/like that president who lied about WMD.” (The Chicks, who famously called out that president, earn her thanks).
DeMent boldly speaks her mind throughout Workin’ on a World, mixing indictments of oppression, greed and the cult of personality with praise for righteous “Warriors of Love.” She also ruminates on love and loss, and addresses God frequently — not surprising for the youngest of a 14-child family raised in the Pentecostal church. But instead of drearily lamenting a world in turmoil or patly claiming prayer is the answer, she strives to induce hope. When she sings “workin’ on a world I may never see,” she’s reminding activists to keep fighting for future generations.
Back home in Iowa several days after her performance, DeMent discussed the facets of a career that took flight 31 years ago with her debut album, Infamous Angel. Two Grammy nominations, one Americana Music Association Trailblazer Award and dozens of collaborations later, she still likes to let the mystery be, so to speak, when it comes to certain aspects of her songwriting process. But when it comes to inspirations and emotions, she spoke just as she does in her songs — with honesty and openness.
BGS: You’ve said this album came about because you wanted to cut yourself a path through the wilderness of despair. Was there any other sense of mission involved?
DeMent: Initially, it was just a level of despair that was not sustainable, and I had to apply myself to something constructive. Beyond that, it was like, I want to fix things. I care about people here; I care about my children, I care about your children, I care about the world. So I want to see it be improved. And I can’t think of a more useful way to spend my time. The best way I know how to do it is to write songs. Because I know from my own experience, songs can energize me and give me hope and confidence to go do my job. I feel like the best thing I can do is contribute to other people — whatever their job is, some inspiring music can help ’em get it done, as we know.
I went through a phase; I did a lot of political, local things — which is incredibly important, don’t get me wrong. But I can’t do both; I noticed that. They’re two different sides of the brain. And I was either doing the phone banks and all that business, or I was gonna be a writer/singer. At some point, that became clear to me. A few people helped me figure that out: “Iris, that’s your gift, stop underrating it and go.” So I just went back into the songs, and as a result, there’s this record. It would not have happened otherwise. I decided to go back to believing in the value of singing some songs.
Did you originally have a target date for an album, or were you just kind of hoping to do something and then Pieta said, “Here it is”?
I think when I was a lot younger and just coming out of the chute, I probably had targets then, because there’s kind of that thing when you’re young; you’ve got to get your ball rolling. I certainly felt that. I had a really intense sense of momentum and urgency, and I don’t think you’ve got to be a songwriter to have that; it’s a time in life thing, in my opinion. And I’m glad to have had that. It was its own, exciting, awesome, wonderful time. But that started shifting, and rather than fight with that, I accepted it. And I’m really glad I did, because I feel like my music’s gotten better; my singing has gotten better.
I feel like allowing myself to relax a little bit, to trust that the songs will evolve as they need to as long as I keep showing up often enough, in my opinion, has worked. A lot of people who talk to me are really focused on these gap periods and all, which to me are not gap periods. It’s the time it took, plain and simple. There’s a lot of records out there; there’s a lot of music. I’m not interested in taking up somebody’s heart and mind space unless I really feel like I have something to say that warrants that.
If I were thinking in terms of a career, I’d have put out a lot more records. Because I’ll build up an audience, then I won’t put out a record for six years. A handful of people stay with me and a lot of others drift off somewhere else. That’s how that works. If I’d even put out a mediocre record here and there, I think I would have kept a lot of folks. People, if they don’t hear from you, they forget about you, by and large. But I’ve been really fortunate that I’ve had enough people who haven’t that I can still go out and play.
I posted a picture from your show on social media, and so many people responded, it was an obvious indicator that they have not forgotten you. Your sold-out show was another. That must be heartening.
Oh, sure. When you feel like you’ve got something to say that you believe somebody needs to hear, it’s a wonderful feeling when that actually happens. I’ll admit it’d be discouraging if I went out there and the rooms were half full. That said, that has never stopped me before, and never will. I’ve always thought that way. I used to get this vision when I started out; I’d conjure up a desperate person, and I have a model in my mind of who this desperate person is, which I won’t get into. But I conjure a picture of them. They walk in, they sit on the back seat, and I’m singing to that person. Nobody knows them. Nobody knows their name. They’re gonna wander out that door, but they’re gonna take something from that room that they needed, and it’s my job to give it to ’em. Yeah, my feelings and my ego and all that stuff come into play, but I’ve gotten really good at overriding all that and thinking of the mission that I’m on and the job that I have to do that isn’t about numbers. It’s about hearts; individuals. I gotta go there with ’em and let the rest go. That rest of it is just not my business.
The list of albums and tracks you’ve contributed to is really astonishing, but you’re probably best known for your duets with John Prine. How did those tend to come about?
John wrote liner notes on my first record. I became acquainted with him through Jim Rooney, who was friends with John, long before I met John. And then when my first record came out, John asked me to go out and open for him, which, of course, I gladly did. Right up till the end, I would always do a couple of shows a year with him, at least. Did quite a lot of shows throughout the years prior to that. And one thing led to another. We got to record those duets together. I just loved John like crazy, and I think he loved me. Singing with him was its own unique thing that’ll never happen again, and I’ll miss that forever.
You cite quite a list of heroes on this album. Did you have to leave many out?
Always. There’s always people. “Warriors of Love,” I could have made it 10 verses long.
How did you choose?
Oh, I couldn’t even begin to explain that. It’s just, you’re sitting there trying to get somewhere and your gut says, “I think this is the direction to go.” Obviously, the people I chose are more universally known. And that helps because you don’t have to write, “here’s the history of this person,” so you can bring people up to speed. Most people are far less familiar with (pro-Palestinian activist) Rachel Corrie than (U.S. Sen.) John Lewis or Dr. King, so that was a little bit of a stretch. But I think I gave enough details to make that picture fairly clear. And there’s lots of information out there if people want to gather it.
With “The Cherry Orchard,” you’re continuing the Russian literature connection you made on your last album (2015’s The Trackless Woods, on which she set poet Anna Akhmatova’s translated words to music; the song is inspired by Anton Chekhov’s play). You’ve got a Russian-born daughter, and you seem relatively steeped in that culture. What drew you to it?
Our daughter was 5½ when we adopted her from Siberia. She’s almost 24 now. So we had a little Russian speaker in our house. There was a lot of mystery there; she had a lot of qualities that were clearly unique to her culture. I can still see them today. So I wanted to understand as much as I could, which is still very minimal; I’m not going to pretend. But I wanted to find a way into that world to the degree that I could. So that’s what I did. I did those Anna Akhmatova poems and took a couple of Russian literature classes. And I found that I love the Russian writers. I must have some sort of natural affinity for the world that made my daughter.
Have you ever seen Chekhov’s plays performed?
I saw Uncle Vanya in Chicago. I cried through the whole damned thing. My husband and my daughter were by my side; they were just looking at me, like, “Is Mom having a breakdown?” I had the same reaction to The Cherry Orchard. I was in my class, this university class with, like, 12 people; I could hardly sit in my chair. There’s just something about the merging of intense elements in so much of Russian life and literature that something in me relates to. I actually had a lot of that in my own family history. Intense drama, poverty, violence, you name it, the whole male-female dynamic, the hierarchies. There’s something in it that is very familiar to me. I’ve just connected with a lot of that literature. Like, just in my body, I mean.
At your show, Pieta said the songs on this album feel really important, and she’s right. They do. You tackle some big topics, and you’re not afraid to name names and focus on divisive issues. I loved hearing you sing “Goin’ Down to Sing in Texas” in Texas, but putting a song like that out in today’s world, do you worry about blowback?
No, I worry about what would happen if I stay quiet. I worry about what will happen if I don’t speak up about these things. I’ve crossed over to that. When I was younger and wrote about the Vietnam War on “Wasteland of the Free,” I wasn’t worried. But then I became the target of a fair amount of hatefulness, to put it mildly, and that was surprising to me. But I’ve got my eyes pretty wide open about what’s going on here now.
No, I don’t feel worried about that. I feel worried about the people who will be hurt if I stay silent. My takeaway from my upbringing and the teachings of Jesus … you’re supposed to care about something bigger than you and invest yourself in it. I wouldn’t go so far as to say, “Oh, I don’t have fear.” Of course I do. But I do feel like that’s what we’re called to do. There’s a power and a confidence and a peace that can come with that as well. I feel that.
This week, we feature my conversation with beloved folk firebrand Iris DeMent. Born the youngest of 14 to a singing Pentecostal family in Arkansas and raised in California, DeMent released her iconic 1992 John Prine-endorsed debut, Infamous Angel, and has been creating poetic protest records and warm collaborations ever since (garnering two folk Grammy nominations along the way), culminating in her much anticipated and fiery new LP, Working On A World.
Certain songwriters in the folk field will occasionally speak up about injustice or corruption — but with Working On A World, DeMent puts the protest front and center: honoring luminaries like Mahalia Jackson, John Lewis, Martin Luther King Jr. and even The Chicks for giving her hope that putting your principles and life on the line will help bend history towards progress and righteousness.
DeMent, who is now based in Iowa with her musician and collaborator husband Greg Brown (check out their biting co-write “I’ll Be Your Jesus”), will be the first to say that at times in her wide-ranging career, playing clubs to enraptured but small audiences, she has questioned whether she was doing enough to make a difference. But songs like the epic Dylan-esque take-down “Going Down To Sing in Texas” show that Dement is still at her fired-up best, confronting the Lone Star State’s open carry gun laws that put so many at risk, while also spitting in the face of all the wannabe tyrants who shun the very progress she is still hoping to see. In many ways, Working On A World is a hard-won release of pent-up energy, created over the course of six years with co-producers Richard Bennett, Jim Rooney and Pieta Brown.
While many of her longtime fans are used to her fearless political confrontations — 1996’s seething The Way I Should and its dark anthem “Wasteland of the Free” demand answers from sexual abusers and government war mongers alike — casual listeners may only know DeMent from her playful duets with sonic soulmate John Prine, most notably the foul-mouthed love song “In Spite Of Ourselves.” With a little laugh, she says she’s alright with that too. Life is long and the music, no matter the light or the dark, is equally as powerful.
Songs can be truly short short stories. There is so little time, so little space to convey a complete narrative. That challenge has always thrilled us when crafting our music. When we were asked to create a themed playlist for The Bluegrass Situation, I thought through our own songs that formed the new album Close Enough to Hear (out February 3) and wondered what common thread tied them together. Many of them really are conveying a story, something with a beginning, middle and end. We all went back to our favorite short story songs and marveled at the writers’ ability to forge a genuine drama, with a plot and characters, inciting events and climaxes, in just a few short minutes. It’s a high wire act, where every single word counts and nothing can be wasted. Here’s a list of our favorite short story songs. — Evan Murphy (acoustic guitar), Mile Twelve
This song makes me emotional every time I hear it. Bruce delivers this Billy Bragg song so powerfully and honestly, giving it a distinctly American flavor. – Nate Sabat (upright bass)
I was recently turned on to Bobbie Gentry through the Cocaine and Rhinestones podcast by Tyler Mahan Coe (highly recommended) and stumbled on this song while checking out her catalog. She’s done such an incredible job painting a musical representation of that longing, wishing feeling of wanting to be included. And on a dorkier note, listen to how the phrasing of the hook is different on line one of the chorus than it is on line four. So, so good. — Nate
Our good friends of the duo Tattletale Saints are excellent songwriters from New Zealand, now based in Nashville. This song about Little Richard has beautiful, clear imagery that pulls you right into the song. It’s a mellow performance, not trying too hard and resulting in a memorable story about a unique Nashville music legend. – BB Bowness (banjo)
This haunting a cappella song written by Jean Ritchie is sung from the wife’s point of view as she awaits news of her husband’s fate down in the mine. The song captures the anxiety and uncertainty she feels while she imagines a possible future without her husband. — BB
A dozen cheap roses in a shopping cart, veins through the skin like a faded tattoo. Isbell’s tight, sparse images bloom into vignettes which form a complete story by the end of this song. A man has reached the limits of his patience with a stagnant life. His father lays dying in the ICU, he has no prospects, nothing to stay for. After long years, he finally decides to pack it up and break free. When I am in a period of writing I actually can’t listen to songs this good. They torment me with their lean, sinewy perfection. To use Isbell’s own language, there is no fat on these lyrics. Everybody knows you in a speed trap town. — Evan
“My name’s Joe Roberts, I work for the state” might as well be “Call me Ishmael.” For me, this is the quintessential short story song. There are major motion pictures with plots less deep. It’s the struggle between two brothers, Joe and Frankie, one a state trooper and the other a struggling veteran who can’t seem to stay out of trouble. “I got a brother named Frankie, and Frankie ain’t no good,” sings Joe. Maybe it’s the fact that I have two older brothers, but when Joe watches Frankie’s taillights disappear across the border I cry, even after hundreds of listens. “I musta done a 110 through Michigan County that night.” How desperate was Joe to catch Frankie, to save him from himself? This song has taught me so much about musical storytelling. Springsteen is larger than life, for me and so many others. I wish I could open the back of his head and see how he does it. Thank God we have his music, it’s sacred. — Evan
“Caleb Meyer, he lived alone in them hollerin’ pines” opens this exquisitely brutal ghost story. Gillian Welch has reshaped the very structure of modern folk songwriting. She and David Rawlings prove that when the song, the vocals and the playing are flawless you really don’t need anything more. “Caleb Meyer” is a haunting murder ballad. A woman fights for her life, finding a broken bottle to slash the throat of her would-be rapist. I am in that room with her when I listen to this, the hair standing up straight on the back of my neck. It’s a full-fledged Western, and she does it in three damn minutes. She is a force of nature. — Evan
The lives of Prine’s characters are smaller and simpler than the legends of epic folk ballads. There’s no steam drill, no six shooters, no gallows at dawn. It’s just Loretta, Davie and Rudy, a back porch, a TV that plays the same old news. This is Prine’s genius, making the mundane transcendent in its beauty and its tragedy. It’s like watching modern human life itself dancing on top of his gorgeous finger-picked eighth notes. He was one of our great American prophets, observing, critiquing, reflecting, teaching. He is missed so dearly. — Evan
“‘If this was the Cold War, we could keep each other warm,’ I said on the first occasion that I met Marie.” Ritter is a favorite of novelist Stephen King. It’s not surprising, given the literary grandeur of his songwriting. The strange, post-apocalyptic tale of Marie and the missile silo transfixed me when I first heard it. It’s more mesmerizing with each repeat listen. How does someone create a world so fully realized, so convincing, with such simple tools at their disposal? What a gorgeously weird tale. — Evan
When I was younger, I had four or five Bob Wills CDs that were pretty much on repeat for my whole childhood. This Cindy Walker song was on a couple of them, and every time I heard that fiddle intro, it would stop me in my tracks. I’d sit there completely absorbed in the stark, dusty imagery. This song is lyrically and musically as simple as it gets, but it packs a heavy emotional punch. When this song was recorded by Bob in 1941, the Dust Bowl was barely history, and I can feel the pain it caused in every beat. You don’t always need fancy chords and poetry to make a statement—sometimes you just need a semi-natural disaster. — Ella Jordan (fiddle)
How can you have a playlist without a Joni Mitchell song? The oppressively ordinary yet starkly evocative imagery in the second half (only Joni can put a dishwasher in a song) somehow reminds me a little of some of Lucia Berlin’s writing. This is one of those songs that if you had never heard anybody sing it and you just read the lyrics, it would still be a beautiful poem. One that takes you on a journey, and makes you feel things. One that makes you question your life choices. We all hope it’s only a phase, these dark café days…. – Ella
This is one of my favorite songs from Randy Newman. He sings about traveling around the United States as a child of a Jewish immigrant family in an attempt to find a home and live the American Dream. He deals with themes such as privilege and the issue of losing one’s culture while assimilating. This is the story of many families during the end of the 19th century and beginning of the 20th and continues to be a relatable topic today. – Korey Brodsky (mandolin)
Songwriter Unknown, Recorded by Hazel & Alice – “Two Soldiers”
The story of two Union soldiers during the Civil War who promise each other they will bring news back to their families if one of them does not make it through the battle. The imagery of war is vivid and the storytelling is masterful. Hazel & Alice bring this one to life in their incredible version. — Korey
Adeem the Artist is not afraid to confront the complex realities that some country songwriters would find more convenient to gloss over. A nonbinary musician who lives in Knoxville, Tennessee, with their wife and young child, Adeem is nothing if not honest. Throughout their new album, White Trash Revelry, they have written songs that feel so deeply personal, yet relatable, exposing pain and struggle in nuanced ways that can make a listener reflect in one moment and laugh in the next.
If you won’t take our word for it, perhaps Brandi Carlile’s will hold more weight: “Adeem the Artist is absolutely incredible. One of the best writers in roots music that I’ve ever heard,” she noted on her SiriusXM radio show, Somewhere Over the Radio. On the last night of a tour supporting William Elliot Whitmore at Off Broadway in St. Louis, Adeem captivated the audience, weaving stories and playful banter between original songs. BGS caught up with them before the performance, and they were generously on-brand with their openness and honesty.
BGS: I read the essay you wrote in the liner notes. From that, and listening to the album, I was struck by the range of emotions with which you reflect on childhood. Can you tell me a little bit about the process of writing these songs and reconciling those mixed emotions?
Adeem: The suffering and celebration thing is important to me. There’s a (Kahlil) Gibran line where he says, ‘the deeper that sorrow carves into your being, the more joy you’re capable of holding.’ That’s something that I’m connected with on this record. They’re not two different things. They’re intrinsically bound.
I mean, this was a frustrating thing for my parents when I was a teenager and a young adult. I was still very plugged into the Christian Church, really passionate about Jesus, and about, you know, building the kingdom of God, and telling ’em they were hypocrites for having a large television and living in a big house and saying like, “You have to give away your money. If you wanna do this, this is what it looks like.” That’s the Christianity that I grew up with. It had a lot of toxic impacts on me, but it is also the reason why I’m who I am. It’s the reason why I care about justice. It’s the reason why I care about equity. It’s the reason why I care about racial equity in country music. The biggest thing for me is to really try to be honest about the experience that I had growing up as a low-income white kid in the rural south.
Tell me a little bit about your songwriting process.
My songwriting process is not exactly rote. I have extensive rules for songwriting, but most of them are kind of unspoken and latent and implicit. I do find the idea that you have to write every day to be a bit obtuse. I think it misses the mark of how much of the experience of writing is sort of adding to your palette. I feel like I’m always working on songs. I just gestate a lot. Louis Hyde talks about the parable of the shoemaker and how you can work and work and work and toil and toil and toil, but sometimes the lightning strikes at night and you wake up and it’s there, it’s done. Your unconscious kind of fulfills the duty of the imagination. I think that’s true. I think about moments that we don’t want to talk about, that we don’t want to address, that we would rather paint over.
I was thinking about the idea of trying to reconcile things as an adult that you learned from your loved ones.
Yeah. I mean, I love Thanksgiving. I like cooking a lot and I like cooking for my friends and the people that I consider family. It’s special to me, and I’ve always loved the Thanksgiving story. You know, my ancestors came over on this big, beautiful boat, and they got here and there were these amazing, interesting indigenous people, and they shared their food with them, and they shared their food back, and then some of them even fell in love and they had this big dinner. It’s beautiful. I think anyone would think it’s beautiful, but it’s just not true. It never happened. The reality is we tried to exterminate them. My ancestors came here and did everything they could to make sure there was no trace of them on the earth, and they survived. Now that’s a special story, but it doesn’t frame my ancestors in the best light.
And I think that what’s important to me is that I figured out that it doesn’t do anyone any good because it assuages us of the responsibility to make things right. That’s the same thing that’s happening with a lot of areas in country music where people are able to rewrite these sort of Thanksgiving stories. What I found was that I would rather tell a story that is still beautiful, that’s still wholesome, that’s not trying to demonize anybody, but is trying to welcome a sort of healing to try and fix the broken pieces. A lot of country musicians make the choice to tell a lie because they think it’s making things better in some way, and it’s a lie and it’s hurting people in very real ways. I don’t think that telling the truth means I have to sacrifice any compassion or kindness or love for my community or my culture, or my family, my ancestors, my people, nothing. It’s just holding it all.
I want to ask about a song from your last record, Cast Iron Pansexual, in which you address Toby Keith with references to three of his songs, by my count. From “I Wish You Would’ve Been a Cowboy,” it sounds like you were at least somewhat of a fan of Toby Keith. Talk about what it was like to grow up singing along to those songs and then having a sort of epiphany about the lyrics as you got older.
Sure. I mean, for one, I don’t know that I stopped regarding Toby Keith as an excellent songwriter. It’s tough for me to answer that because I went through a really significant change. I grew up in Charlotte. My family’s from the lower Piedmont region, just outside of the city. When I was 12 or 13 years old, we moved to Syracuse, New York. I had been listening to country music but also growing apart from it pretty naturally. I was what some might call “fagish.” I was a bit effeminate. My mom smoked weed and went to metal shows. I got in trouble for swearing in class one time. I didn’t fit in the rural town where I was.
Just all that to say, I felt estranged from it probably before I started interfacing with any of the heaviness of why I was feeling estranged. When I moved to New York it was like, you know, it doesn’t matter what you wear when your accent’s like, (says in a thick southern accent) “Oh, me mama gonna go get the buggy from the grocery.” You know? It’s like I was a good old boy all of a sudden. I was a redneck, which is a really weird thing to interface with. So, country music was something that I shied away from and didn’t think about for a long time.
But as those years went on, [the experiences in New York] became further and further from me. You know, I think about it now, and it’s like, man, I was listening to Garth Brooks sing about how being gay is okay in the ‘90s. Holy shit. You know what I mean? The country music industry became so richly conservative in ways that it wasn’t before, even in the aftermath of 9/11 and with what they did to Natalie Maines, you know? Talk about cancel culture…
Luckily there are many artists out there who have bucked the trend, but there’s certainly a lot of country music that perpetuates misogyny, American exceptionalism, and exalt “the South” in such a way…ideas that you decry in your songs. You touched on it already, but can you talk more about your relationship with country music in general?
There are two things I want to say. The first is a merging of this question, and the last one you asked me, which is, I do want to say I really toiled over whether or not I wanted to release this song (“I Wish You Would’ve Been a Cowboy”). I have jokingly said in the past that it’s because I didn’t want Willie Nelson to be disappointed in me. But the truth is, I don’t know Toby Keith. I don’t know what he’s about. I don’t know how he feels about this. I don’t know if he’s ever thought about it. But most people, when they’re told, “Hey, something you did hurt people,” they’re like, “Well, fuck, I didn’t mean to do that.” I would imagine that he would probably have the same reaction. So, I really hope to have that sort of interaction. I’m not a cancel culture person. I really would like to see people healed in some meaningful way.
My relationship with country music has been estranged until about, I’d say, six or seven years ago. I discovered Roger Alan Wade. He wrote the Jackass theme song, “If You’re Gonna Be Dumb, You Gotta Be Tough,” and “Butt Ugly Slut,” and some other disgusting songs. But he’s written some really stunning poetry. He’s got this song where he describes the West Texas sunset as “spread out like rusted chrome.” It’s really gorgeous. He has such a poetic lens and such a compassionate view at fundamentally broken and lost characters that drew me in. The Mountain Goats are one of my favorite bands, and he seemed to be writing about some of the same riffraff that would cycle a Mountain Goats album.
And through him I got into Guy Clark and John Prine and James McMurtry. John Prine was, in many ways, like coming home. I’d always been really into the marriage of suffering and celebration. That was always kind of like my bag. I think I’m better at it now than I used to be. My mark has been a sort of conglomerate of intense emotional pain interspersed with moments of just chaotic jack-assery and laughter, you know? When I first heard John Prine, it was like a true north. I heard him and I was like, “Oh, he is following something that I’m following. And he’s closer to it.” I felt such a natural kinship with him. And I felt that with a lot of other country musicians too.
On White Trash Revelry, it seemed like you embraced more of a pop-country sound, whereas the prior album felt a lot more folky and subdued. Did that happen organically or was that something you were trying to accomplish in the writing and recording process?
Yeah. I was trying to write some songs. There was a period where I was really into the idea that I might get a publishing deal someday, and I love my family a lot. The idea that I could be able to afford to give my family a good life and not have to be on the road or whatever was like, “Yeah, I would like to do that.” So, I wrote “Baptized in Well Spirits” and “Middle of a Heart.” There are probably four songs on this record that were written pretty strongly…like they were crafted, you know? The intention, when I wrote them, I wanted somebody else to sing them. But then, as this album started taking shape, it became clear they really fit in. So, I don’t know if that’s the direction that I will persist in moving forward or not, you know, incorporating the pop country elements of it. But I like having it on my palette, and I’m not gonna take it off. If it feels right, I’ll keep doing it.
Artist:Isaac Hoskins Latest Album:Bender Hometown: I spent the majority of my formative years in Wellington, Kansas. A small wheat-farming town between Wichita and the Oklahoma state line. I’ve lived in Denton, Texas, for 19 years and I definitely call it home now but Wellington still has a great deal to do with the way I see the world.
Personal nicknames: When I was a kid there was another boy who lived down the street who, for some reason, couldn’t pronounce my name instead called me Izeke (eye-zeek). My mother started calling me Zeke and it stuck. To this day, a lot of people in Kansas call me Zeke.
Which artist has influenced you the most … and how?
Oh, man! There are so many. I’d imagine that Steve Earle is probably the biggest influence that I’ve had as a songwriter and performer. Obviously, Steve’s music was and continues to be a massive influence but most any other artist that I became a fan of early on was because they were in and around his orbit. The internet was still a pretty new thing, so discovering music that wasn’t on the Top 40 chart was pretty difficult without some sort of road map. Guy Clark, Townes Van Zandt, Rodney Crowell, Jerry Jeff Walker, all of the usual suspects came to me after reading Steve’s biography (Hardcore Troubadour). Steve Earle was my gateway drug.
What’s your favorite memory from being on stage?
When I was in junior college I was in a choir that was invited to sing a piece of music entitled The Testament of Freedom at Carnegie Hall. The piece was composed by a man named Randall Thompson and inspired by writings of Thomas Jefferson. It was the spring after the 9/11 attacks and the entire experience was incredibly moving. Both the subject matter and setting were something I’ll never forget. I’m told that Kevin Bacon was there so perhaps I’m one degree closer than most.
What was the first moment that you knew you wanted to be a musician?
I knew that I wanted to be a musician from a very early age, but given my surroundings I never felt like it was something that was attainable. I attended a music festival in Helotes, Texas, called Jack Ingram’s Real American Music Festival and that was the day that I knew for sure, that was the day that I felt like it was something that I could do. I was watching all of these incredible performers that, up to that point, I had never even heard of. The Bottle Rockets, James McMurtry, Hayes Carll and so many other people were proving to me that you don’t have to be Garth Brooks to make a life in music and I was immediately obsessed.
What has been the best advice you’ve received in your career so far?
I had the opportunity to talk to Don Schlitz once. He told me, “Write the song you want to hear and you’ll be surprised who wants to hear it too.” I think of that often, so concise, so true. Thanks, Don.
Which elements of nature do you spend the most time with and how do those impact your work?
I’m a duck hunter, and more often than not, I hunt alone on public land. Hunting on public land means that you’ve got to get there earlier than anyone else if you want to be sure that you have your spot. Most days I’ll begin my walk to the lake at four o’clock which means I’ve got somewhere in the neighborhood of three hours to hike in, find my spot, put my decoys out and get a decent hide before shooting time (30 minutes before sunrise). That time before and during sunrise is my favorite. I use it to think about the people, places and things that matter to me and might also matter to someone else. Watching the day come alive is a spiritual moment for me, every time. Living in the business of making noise, it’s nice to soak up a little silence.
Kentucky music is currently having a moment, but it’s far from the first time. Before artists like Tyler Childers, Sturgill Simpson, and Chris Stapleton made it big, folks like Bill Monroe, Loretta Lynn, Keith Whitley, Crystal Gayle, Tom T. Hall, Patty Loveless, Ricky Skaggs, Dwight Yoakam, and countless others helped build up the Bluegrass State’s rich musical foundation spanning bluegrass, country music, and more.
With so much talent having originated from Kentucky, there’s no shortage of destinations around the Commonwealth to consume this musical history. From the Mountain Arts Center in Prestonsburg in the southeast to the Muhlenberg Music & History Museum in the west, Lexington’s Red Barn Radio and beyond, every nook, cranny and holler throughout the state is full of destinations beckoning to be explored by music fans. We’ve compiled more than a dozen of these attractions below in an epic road trip that could be called the Kentucky Music Trail.
Central Kentucky
Opened in 2002, the Kentucky Music Hall of Fame & Museum in Mount Vernon features exhibits showcasing talent from throughout the state ranging from country and bluegrass trail blazers like Bill Monroe, Loretta Lynn and Keith Whitley along with Black Stone Cherry, The Kentucky Headhunters and Exile, among others. The museum is open from 10 a.m.-5 p.m. daily with an admission of $10.
Also sitting on the same 55-acre property is the Renfro Valley Entertainment Center. First opened in 1939, the massive barn features two unique performance halls that host country, gospel and bluegrass music annually from April through December. Additionally, the venue has been the home of Renfro Valley Gatherin’, a syndicated radio program airing on Sunday nights at 9:30 p.m. EST, since 1943. The show is the third oldest continually broadcast radio program in America and the second longest continuously running such program featuring country music, behind only the Grand Ole Opry.
Back inside the Hall of Fame & Museum, one of the most prominent exhibits is one showcasing Woodsongs Old-Time Radio Hour, an internationally syndicated radio program hosted by folk musician Michael Johnathon in front of a live studio audience at the historic Lyric Theatre in Lexington on most Monday nights at 7 p.m. Launched in 1998, the entirely volunteer-run production spotlights musicians across all genres performing their songs and sharing the stories behind them. Now over 1,000 episodes in (and counting), the program has featured artists like Sam Bush, J.D. Crowe, The Black Opry, Riders in the Sky and Billy Strings. Each show also features a “Woodsongs Kid,” helping to encourage and grow the next generation of Kentucky songwriters.
Another radio program based in Lexington and featuring talent from around Kentucky, Appalachia and the southeast with a similar mix of conversation and performance is Red Barn Radio. Founded in the early 2000s at Renfro Valley’s little red barn (from which the show draws its name), co-founder Ed Commons helped lead the show’s move to its current home inside LexArt’s headquarters in downtown Lexington in 2005. The show has taken off since moving there, hosting everyone from Sam Bush to J.D. Crowe, Tom T. Hall, John R. Miller, Arlo McKinley, Sierra Ferrell, Sunday Valley (led by a young Sturgill Simpson) and Tyler Childers. In the case of Childers, his performance on the show became so revered that he ended up releasing it as a live album, Live on Red Barn Radio I & II, in 2016.
Eastern Kentucky
Out east on the campus of Morehead State University you’ll find the Kentucky Center for Traditional Music (KCTM), a school teaching the next generation of bluegrass and old-time musicians the nuances, history and business side of the music. Founded in 2000, the center offers the only Bachelor of Arts in Traditional Music in Kentucky along with a minor in traditional music. It also features an extensive digital archive of Kentucky and Appalachian traditional music, a recording studio, sound-proofed classrooms and rehearsal spaces. Alumni from the school include Linda Jean Stokley and Montana Hobbs of The Local Honeys, current professor and pedal steel player for Nicholas Jamerson, Thomas Albert; Lauren and Leanna Price of The Price Sisters, and current Assistant Director, Archivist, Instructor and member of Tyler Childers’ band, Jesse Wells.
Just over an hour southeast of the KCTM you’ll find the U.S. 23 Country Music Highway Museum. Located just off of U.S. 23 in Staffordsville just north of Paintsville, the museum features memorabilia from Tyler Childers, Chris Stapleton, Loretta Lynn, The Judds, Patty Loveless, Dwight Yoakam, Billy Ray Cyrus, Tom T. Hall and other artists hailing from the counties that the highway passes through in Eastern Kentucky. The area known as the “Country Music Highway” is distinguished as having the highest number of charting country musicians calling the area home per capita than anywhere else in the world. Admission to the museum is $4.
After another half-hour drive through the area’s Appalachian mountain back roads and hollers you’ll come across Loretta Lynn’s birthplace at Butcher Hollow in the old coal mining community of Van Lear. The humble mountainside cabin features four rooms to explore—one bedroom for Loretta, younger sister Crystal Gayle and her five other siblings; a bedroom for her parents, a tiny kitchen and a cozy dining room—all covered wall to wall in pictures and other collectibles from the Coal Miner’ Daughter’s childhood and life as a musician. Tours are $5 and are typically guided by members of Lynn’s family who still call the holler home.
About a mile up the road from Lynn’s home you’ll find Webb’s Grocery, a general store constructed by the Consolidated Coal Company in 1918 when Van Lear’s coal output was near its peak. In addition to stocking ice cold Coca Cola, Mallo Cups and other quick bites the shop also is stuffed with tons of pictures of Loretta Lynn and her family including a massive banner reading “Welcome Loretta Lynn.” A journey to Butcher Hollow offers not only an incredible look back on the upbringing of one of country music’s most iconic voices, but also a look back on the mountain towns ravaged by the boom and bust of the coal industry that back in the day helped to power our entire country.
Another 30 minutes south of Van Lear is the Mountain Arts Center (MAC) in Prestonsburg. Opened in 1996, the building features a 1,000-seat concert hall, a state-of-the-art recording studio, loads of rehearsal space and will soon be the home to the TV and radio headquarters of CMH23, an organization dedicated to educating people on the history of artists from the Country Music Highway and giving a platform to up-and-coming musicians from the region. According to Executive Director Joe Campbell, the MAC and CMH23 are also partnering with The Country Network on Live From CMH23, a show that will focus on rising artists from around the state.
The MAC is also the home of a family variety show called Billie Jean Osborne’s Kentucky Opry, as well as the Kentucky Opry Jr. Pros. (an educational program for aspiring entertainers ages 6 to 18) and the Appalachian Arts & Entertainment Awards. Kentucky Opry alumni include Chris Stapleton’s longtime bassist J.T. Cure, Jesse Wells, Tyler Childers’ piano/keys player Chase Lewis, Brit Taylor, Marleena Vanhoose and Rebecca Lynn Howard.
Western Kentucky
Just under two and a half hours west of Lexington via the Western Kentucky Parkway is Rosine, a small town in Ohio County with its claim to fame being the birthplace of the Father of Bluegrass, Bill Monroe. In the heart of Rosine, you’ll find several landmarks commemorating the artist starting with the Bill Monroe Museum, which houses countless instruments, outfits, fan letters, photos, personal furniture and even Monroe’s personal Cadillac DeVille in a constantly growing and evolving collection. The museum is open Monday-Saturday from 10 a.m.-4 p.m. Admission is $3-5.
Less than a mile up the road from the museum is the Rosine Barn Jamboree, which hosts free bluegrass jams every Friday night from mid-March through mid-November. A stone’s throw away from the barn sits the Rosine Cemetery, where you can’t miss the grave of Monroe. Featuring an obelisk-style monument and adorned in flowers, Monroe’s grave stands tall over the quaint hillside cemetery as, even in death, he watches over the town that helped to define him. The cemetery also includes several of Monroe’s family members including Birch and Charlie Monroe and Pendleton (Uncle Pen) Vandiver.
Also nearby is Jerusalem Ridge, Bill Monroe’s homeplace. On the compound you can see Monroe and other family member’s childhood homes. Restored in 2001, Bill’s home features guided tours Monday-Saturday from 9 a.m.-4 p.m. and Sundays from 1-4 p.m. The site also features several stages and plays host to the Jerusalem Ridge Bluegrass Celebration, a festival taking place annually in September with some of the region and country’s best traditional bluegrass bands.
Less than an hour west of Rosine in Central City you can learn about icons like John Prine, The Everly Brothers, Merle Travis, Ike Everly, Mose Rager and Kennedy Jones at the Muhlenberg Music & History Museum. In addition to the traditional museum the building features a 1950s era jukebox serving up hits from the aforementioned artists that call Muhlenberg County home along with a towering Everly Brothers monument just outside. It also houses the Kentucky Motorsports Museum.
Just under an hour north of Central City is the last stop of our Kentucky Music Trail tour at the Bluegrass Music Hall of Fame & Museum along the banks of the Ohio River in Owensboro. The latest jewel of Owensboro’s transformed downtown, the $15.3 million building opened in October 2018 not only houses the museum and hall of fame, but also the 447 seat Woodward Theatre, a gift shop and several private event spaces along with a 1,500-seat outdoor amphitheater to boot.
When it comes to the museum, the biggest of bluegrass fans could easily spend a day diving into everything the facility has to offer. A self-guided audio tour will inform you on the ins and outs of each exhibit, the roots and impact of artists to bluegrass music, the nuances of the music and more, helping to fully immerse and indulge visitors in the music. On display are items from the likes of Rhonda Vincent, Bill Monroe, Billy Strings, Sam Bush, The SteelDrivers’ fiddler Tammy Rogers, Flatt & Scruggs, The Steep Canyon Rangers, J.D. Crowe, Hee Haw, bluegrass’ cinematic coronation O Brother, Where Art Thou? and more.
Other facilities in the museum include a pickin’ parlor where guests can play on pre-tuned guitars, mandolins, banjos, upright bass and more along with a transcribed and searchable interview database provided in partnership with the University of Kentucky’s Louie B. Nunn Center for Oral History, a massive display honoring banjo maker Jimmy Cox and the Hall of Fame itself. The prestigious space contains 68 plaques honoring those instrumental to bluegrass from its roots to its golden age and everywhere in between. Much like the museum, it offers a tremendous look back at the genre’s roots, where it is now and how it got there.
The same could be said for all of these destinations. I was already in love with my home state prior to visiting all of these places, but after having done so I’ve grown an even greater appreciation for the state, its musical roots and trailblazing artists. I’m confident that you will too upon making the trip for yourself.
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